Same problems, Different Country

The trials of a family know no borders. Human emotion is the one thing that unites us all. Unfortunately I have had to witness the current trials of my resource family. About a week ago I went to visit. It was a happy time because my mother and father were both home. My resource dad works in Kigali – about 2 hours away. He lives there during the weekdays and lives at home on the weekends. It’s always a happier time when the whole family is complete. It was time for him to leave though we escorted him to the edge of the neighborhood to bid adieu, wife, 4 children and strange foreigner in tow. We said goodbye and he kissed all his children goodbye. Once we reentered the house, my resource mom went to find her cell phone. (*Almost every family here has one communal cell phone and no land line. Most have trouble keeping their cell phone charged consistently because electricity going off and on or no electricity at all.) After a few minutes my resource mom came back into the living room with a distressed look on her face. In our limited common language she explained that her live in nanny-housekeeper-cook was leaving. I assumed she was leaving for the night but quickly realized she meant forever. Here was now a mother who works five days a week as a school teacher from early in the morning until 5pm who had to worry about having no help. Her husband had just left for the next five days. Her children range from 9 years old to 2 years old. Her level of stress had just elevated exponentially. But Violette didn’t lose her calm. She asked if I had any more language questions to go over – as if that’s what she wanted to deal with right then. I asked a couple quick questions and then made my exit. As I was leaving the housekeeper came bolting out of the house after me. She was carrying her one small bag of possessions. Her mood was elated. She had the exact look of being very excited about her future but also having a degree of uncertainty and fear – basically just excited to jump off the cliff and figure out her future. We walked out the neighborhood together, completely unable to communicate except for exchanging our names. I felt mixed emotions after witnessing the stress of my resource mom in direct comparison to the joy of the leaving housekeeper.

I have visited twice since then. Last weekend, my resource father’s mom and sister (both also teachers) were there to help with the children and the cooking. They both had to leave eventually to catch up on their own lives. This once again left my resource mom alone. Her three youngest children have been left at home to fend for themselves during the weekdays. I’ve heard this isn’t completely uncommon here. There is generally a neighbor who will check in on them. Violette has seemed much more on edge. Whenever I am there to visit there she is always rushing around doing laundry and cooking. Her husband helps when he can but he if often gone, making the majority of the money for the family.

The tone of visits has certainly changed. She no longer urges me to stay for hours. She has so much to do that I am definitely impeding on her productivity, although she would never say that to me. The last visit she even hinted that she had to bathe the kids and get dinner cooking. I made the door fairly quickly feeling the pain of the situation. Every time I come now the second thing out of her mouth is how she hasn’t found a replacement yet and she has many problems. I wish I could help but I’m quite useless with the practical skills here considering I don’t know the proper method of washing clothes by hand or cooking on a wood stove. Even the garden is a mystery to me. Most families here have some semblance to a personal garden, on top of farming plots of land. My family has quite the selection of ingredients – tomatoes, sugar cane, sage, onions, cabbage, three varieties of lettuce, a banana tree, plus many others I can’t remember. Their backyard is a fairly average size backyard in American suburb terms.

To bring it all back around, I was supposed to have my standard Sunday visit with my family today. I was going to arrive much earlier than I usually do so that I could have cooking lessons from Violette. The visit was cancelled though. I am selfishly elated. This is the very first day since I’ve been in Rwanda where I have absolutely nothing to do! I am relaxing to the max. Sleeping in seems to be out of the question though. Every day my house wakes up around 6am and is at breakfast at 7am, classes begin at 8am. We are not able to come home after dinner until 8pm. Even on our glorious Sundays we generally all wake up before 7am. I’m still enjoying every second of this day – awake or not.

Last night we had a wonderful celebration of St. Patty’s Day and all our March birthdays. Rwandans and our small group of Americans love to dance so we tore up the dance floor. Our curfew is 10pm so by 9:45 we were at home. Luckily our foyer is a great mini dance floor. We continued our celebration and had some wonderful cross cultural dance lessons. Rwandan dancing is a bit like Caribbean and the hula. When an American song would come on that we didn’t know how to dance to, the Rwandan moves would come out. We have a couple of past dance instructors in the house. The cha-cha lessons are pretty entertaining to watch!